"Still need to test telepathy orders."

"Yeah, let's test that." Rather than using a spell he switches to a telepathy blessing and sends, Order me to raise my right arm?

Raise your right arm.

He does. "Okay so that works. More dangerous if he has it, but means that part of the plan at least won't fail."

"Can you block it if he has it?"

"If he has something I haven't thought of I'll only be able to block it once I see it, but I can get a blanket spell for the kinds of communicative effects I know."

Nod.

"Anything more or should we iron out the last details and get started?"

"We should make sure we have the same recollection of the contents of the plan."

"Yeah."

The goal is to spy on Thorn and figure out what he's planning and what they should do about it. The outline of the plan is they get as undetectable as they can, wearing their earmuffs, and Promise makes two gates to two different places near Thorn's court—one gate coming from where they currently are, the second coming from an unspecified location Explorer mustn't know about. Explorer determines whether Thorn is in that specific court, and they repeat these steps until they find him. When they've found him, Explorer will hang around and listen in on him and see what steps he has already taken and what steps he's planning to take to secure more magic. Promise will be hidden and, in case Explorer's found and captured, will telepathically rescind all his orders so he can fly away as fast as he can.

"I don't know much about possible gate sites in your world. Or the other mortal world."

"You could just fly in a random direction away from civilisation—towns and cities are spaced enough apart anywhere but the direction of that city's fine. Or, I guess, you could still gate from here and then just close the gate as soon as you came back through if anything went wrong."

"Oh, I was imagining wanting me harder to find than 'away for a while'."

"We just need you hard enough to find that if Thorn captures me and this fails you have enough time to get safe, right?"

"I suppose."

"If we use your bracelet to stabilise the harmonics here and gate, after you go through one of the gates they'll all become tears so if you need to you can just come back and through another gate and they'll close as soon as you do."

"...rephrase that?"

"Gates become tears when the harmonics are sufficiently screwy, right? So if you use your bracelet to flatten the harmonics on this side and make the gates, once you step through one of the gates the harmonics will soon stabilise back to what they were before and it'll become a tear, as will the others. Then when you step back here, it'll disappear."

"Ah."

"So do you prefer finding somewhere else to gate from, or is here fine?"

"I'll find somewhere else."

"Okay. Let's get it started, then?"

"...okay."

He starts with the spell to make them undetectable—invisible to all light from infrared to ultraviolet, inaudible, intangible unless they add voluntary exceptions, the air around them is only minimally disturbed when they breathe—and the telepathy spell. Explorer furthermore gets flight. They wear their earmuffs.

She flies high to get a really good view and picks a faraway spot.

She gates.